Thursday, October 2, 2008

It's a handsome fruit, running medium-to-large, with a streaky red blush over yellow (to yellow-green). There's a little ribbing and some russet in the stem well, and spots that look light tan against the blush and a darker green where there is none. The surface is a little uneven, with minor pocks and swells, but the effect is not unattractive.

The flesh is firm, a crisp coarse yellow that holds a lot of juice. The flavor is super sweet with very little balancing tartness and negligible acidity; there are accents of pear and melon. Honeycrisp's flavor is simple, direct, and consistent from the beginning of the first bite to the end of the last.
These apples are popular. Minnesota has already made Honeycrisp the official state fruit. Like Macoun, it commands a premium at the market.

I doubt that there are many devotees of both, though. If you think apples should taste like candy, you won't care much for those that suggest wine--and vice versa.

The sign at Farmers market for these summarized their appeal as "Explosively Sweet." If apples mean candy to you, here is your fruit. Some people like explosively sweet tea, too.
Even though I find Honeycrisp cloying. I admit: I ate the whole thing down to the core.

The University of Minnesota, which holds the patent on Honeycrisps and introduced them in 1991, has a detailed enumeration of their virtues. Wikipedia's Honeycrisp entry challenges the theory that Honeycrisp is a scion of Macoun and shines some inadvertent light on where new apple varieties come from.

30 comments:

Early Saturday evening prime time nationwide TV here in Kiwiland we have a weekly farming/rural show. Last night was on an apple orchard so I took note. It was on the establishment of the first orchard here in NZ of the previously unknown (to us) variety called Honeycrisp, to be grown for off-season export to the US.

The inventor/discoveror/owner of Honeycrisp from U of Minn was here for the launch, etc. The whole crop will be exported so Honeycrisp will remain unavailable in NZ.

Some snippets from the show that I wrote down. The orchard has 16,000 trees, and each one is pruned to have 37 fruit bearing limbs. Their previous specialty was supply of Gala to the UK supermarket chain Sainsburys. Interestingly the UK market requires small apples, unlike the US/Asia which requires large apples.

They use a low spray and biological pest targeting regime which means they had to completely upgrade their post-harvest apple washing system to get all the extra good and bad bugs off the apples. The automated apple grader/packer sorts the apples by size and mixes and matches them so that each carton of apples is full to the top but only contains the required 18 kilograms of apples.

Wel anyway, you probably know much of this but it was interesting to see how a large orchard worked.

Have you tried SweeTango? It's a HoneyCrisp x Zestar cross. Many people it's better still. See: http://sweetango.com for more information. What do you think about "managed varieties" of apples in general?

James, I seek out every variety that comes my way. This one hasn't made it to my part of the world yet, but I am sure it will.

Have you tried it? What is it like?

I am fine with "managed varieties," assuming you mean apples that (like Sweetango or Honeycrisp) are promoted by marketing campaigns funded by licensing fees, or by an exclusive licensee. Some of these apples are very good.

But I can't help but notice that most of these new managed varieties have awfully similar flavors. I think that is a product of a winner-take-all marketplace which rewards the "best" variety and says the others aren't any good at all.

I prefer a "de gustibus" marketplace with lots of choices and variety, and with low barriers to entry, where a fine old variety like Baldwin or a newer one like Topaz is sold even though their patents have expired (which means there are no licensing fees to pay for advertising).

It will be interesting to see what happens to Honeycrisp now that its patent has expired. Will the public stay the course or be seduced by the next marketing campaign?

I am certainly no expert in apples, my favorite fruit being the cranberry:) But, Honeycrisp will keep me coming to it long after the patent runs out. I just tried a Pacific Rose...it was expensive $ per pd, and I wondered why? I was unfamiliar with the name and thought to give it a go. It was very good!!...but Honeycrisp you have my heart:) And thanks Kiwi for your informative post...very interesting. I now know why I am seeing a 'spattering' of Honeycrisp in some stores as we speak...they are few and far between, but can be found. But truly, the Honeycrisp from western WI cannot be beat.

I just wanted to chime in as say that I indeed love Macoun and Honeycrisp both for eating out of hand. Macoun clearly has much more going on for complexity of flavor and I like the smaller size. Honeycrisp is like a healthy candy.....sweet and crunchy! These would be good to buy and try together.

So after hearing a lot of raves and praises for the honeycrisp is it actually worth the hype? I'm a huge fan of Pacific Roses and other apples dull in comparison. So how does the honeycrisp measure up to the Pacific Rose?

I did not realize how expensive honeycrisps were! I did buy one to try and you are right, the pacific rose is quite different AND I definitely prefer it over the honeycrisp. It's so hard to eat other apples after Pacific Roses now!

I love a lot of different apples. Top favorite is still is McIntosh. Though I love Nova Mac, Gala, Cortland, Gravenstein, Honeycrisp, SweeTango, Spartan, Ambrosia and Golden Delicious too name a few.

I just got a Honeycrisp trees, for $20 dollars. I was hoping to grow some, since they are so expensive to buy. $3.99 CAN a pound, though in season they go for as cheap as $1.25 CAN a pound.

Was wondering what would be good trees to grow with it? Or what would be good to pollinate it. Was also thinking of trying to cross it with a McIntosh or Cortland because they grow really well here. Specially since they are my top three favorite apples.

I quite like the idea of one's own micro-breeding program. Why should big operations like UMinn have all the fun and glory? And crossing Honeycrisp with a tart apple like McIntosh could be truly great.

I love this apple, with a nice chunk of apple wood smoked Havarti or Cheddar cheese. It's expensive for sure, and often difficult to find. We get it in December and then by mid-January you'll be hard pressed to find any in the stores.

Like Byron, I've gone so far as to get my own tree - a 6-way espalier with each branch a different variety to ensure even the triploid varieties get pollinated. It's in it's 2nd year of producing fruit. It hasn't been great. Too much rain and cold in spring and summer and a very hot and dry, prolonged Indian Summer that lasted through end of October made for a very poor harvest.

I have avoided the Honeycrisp for many years now. From what I recall, they were big, juicy and innocuously sweet with little personality (in that case, very much like the Pacific Rose.) I recently discovered smaller and more 'orchard-y' looking ones (not uniform in shape, thicker skin) at Walmart and decided to give them another shot. The two that I've had so far have been barely sweet at all and very sour/bitter not unlike a grapefruit. I'm wondering if this is due to overbreeding? Sitting too long? Not long enough? I don't know much about how apples age. Once they are in my possession, they don't last long. :)

Hi.A short comment from Russia about Honey CrispAfter frost -39,2 C (-38,56 F) last year growth has suffered, but not very much.Photos fruits of growth and on my websitehttp://nizovo-sad.ru/index/khani_krisp/0-116

Interesting. I took a leap of faith and planted two Honeycrisp trees without ever having tried the fruit itself. It got such rave reviews that I hoped for the best. I'm only a year in, so we'll see what happens once they start bearing...

I grow honey crisp apples they are a very hard apple to grow because they get bitter bit low calcium they make excellent cider the apples in the store is junk go to apple orchards and pick you oun if there is any left